“An unjust law is not a law,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from his Birmingham, Alabama, jail cell. The letter is well known – less so the fact that King was writing to fellow church leaders who disapproved of his breaking the law in the name of civil rights. I was saddened to…
(JTA) — The umbrella body for Conservative synagogues approved a resolution to allow individual congregations to decide whether to grant membership to non-Jews. The resolution was passed on March 1 during a Special Meeting of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism General Assembly held over the internet with electronic voting. The measure passed overwhelmingly by…
In a recent article published in the Forward, editor-in-chief Jane Eisner wrote about her unease at the prospect of synagogues getting involved in growing Sanctuary Movement. “Unease” doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt upon reading her editorial. The crux of Eisner’s argument: this “nascent movement of churches, mosques and synagogues to become sanctuaries,…
(JTA) — Following the recent wave of bomb threats against Jewish community centers and the vandalism of two Jewish cemeteries, some Muslims on Twitter are offering to help guard Jewish sites. The tweeters, including some veterans, said they would volunteer to protect JCCs, cemeteries and synagogues, the Huffington Post first reported. This latest show of…
The house that stood on the land where my childhood synagogue would later stand was once a stop for slaves heading to freedom on the Underground Railroad. That synagogue, where I went regularly to worship and study in my formative years, once served as a secret storage point for arms bound for Israel during its…
Congregation Mishkan Israel, in Hamden, Connecticut, has a well-earned reputation for social activism, sometimes of the controversial kind. A progressive Reform synagogue that is said to be oldest Jewish congregation in the state, Mishkan Israel has hosted figures from Martin Luther King Jr. to a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The synagogue sponsored seven…
Eight refugee families, still in limbo. That is the situation Chicago synagogues are dealing with after having volunteered to sponsor them—about 35 people in all—since President Donald Trump issued his executive order banning citizens of seven Muslim majority countries from entering the United States. Despite a February 3 court order temporarily lifting the ban, and…
When my friend Jonathan Tobin and I began planning last spring for a cross-country synagogue speaking tour in the fall, we fully expected to meet with fireworks over Israeli policy. In fact, that was the point of our tour. At each stop, Jonathan the conservative Commentary blogger and I the liberal Forward columnist would argue…
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